War prompts distress symptoms in Israeli Blind Snake

Abstract

During a series of explosions in a recent eruption of violence between Israel and Gaza, the metabolic rate of a Syrian Blind Snake Xerotyphlops syriacus peaked acutely, and its breathing pattern changed. This is the first record of a wild animal’s real-time physiological response to the noise of an incoming rocket attack and highlights the gap in our understanding of how anthropogenic noise – and military activity in general – affects individual wildlife.

Stressed reptiles pay the metabolic price of war

“…However, the lizard Aspidoscelis neotesselatus has shown stress responses in reaction to military jet flyovers, including higher blood ketone and corticosterone levels, and more time spent foraging afterward as compensation for lost energy (Kepas et al, 2023). Dubiner et al (2023) recently reported evidence of a sharp increase in the respiration of a single individual blind snake Xerotyphlops syriacus during a 2021 rocket attack on Tel Aviv. Sadly, while conducting a long-term experiment on the physiology of geckos, the eruption of the war between Israel and Hamas allowed us to empirically test and quantify the real-time effects of repeated bombings on reptile metabolism.…”

“…We assume the increased metabolic costs indicate an acute stress response, initiated by the loud noise or vibrations from the explosions (Dubiner et al, 2023) and continuing, to a lesser degree, several hours after. Despite ranging from the Day 4 to Day 32 of the war, the geckos' response did not attenuate.…”